Ok.... see, we start out with a group of people in a plain. The group of people are military....? I guess? Anyways, they stole a shit load of money from their job- whatever it was- and now they have .....hijacked a plane and kidnapped a pilot and his daughter? Ok... I'm following that much so far.
A 1-2 punch in this movie is overacting followed by lack of explanation. It seems to be the writer /directors favorite combination so far. Well bravo. You're doing an awesome job with that.
Now, apparently there is a double crosser in the gang of thieves and he grabs the money and jumps out the plane. Parachutes down in to the safety of what looks like Alabama backwoods, but I think it's supposed to be Mexico...? Not sure. As soon as he starts scrambling around on the ground, you start seeing these scarecrows about. Tons of them. They are pretty fuckugly. You can tell that the art department was on a time crunch because only 2 of them look decent, while the rest of them are barely slapped together.
Now, two more people from the group parachute down to try and track the double crosser down, while everyone else in the plane is going to find a place to land or whatever... and catch up later.
What this means, is that we have about 20 mins of filler as everyone on the ground just circles in the same small amount of woods while trying to pretend this is a huge big open area. Fail. This gets boring quick. I'm tried of watching the double crosser piss himself at every scarecrow and I'm equally tired of watching the two who are chasing him yell retarded things in to their headset. We got it. You're chasing the guy. You can stop being obnoxious d-bags now. I'm bored.
I don't know if I dozed off or if it was just not shown, but the peeps in the plane land somewhere and find this lone house amazingly close to where they landed the plane. Oh, and it also just happens to be abandoned. Cool. So some of the group shack up at the house with the hostages, while the other part of the group go and also search for the double crosser, who, at this point is so terrified of all the scarecrows, you can probably follow his trail be the stream of urine he's leaving behind.
Before our scene at the house ends for the moment, the camera focuses on this picture on the wall. A little smaller then an 8 x 10, 3 older men who look like they are posing after a long day of hunting. Is this pivotal to the story? Is this a clue of something I need to file away for later? Is this somehow foreshadowing something?? I don't know...
So now over half the gang is chasing this one guy who still is somehow NOT very far away. We the viewer see a quick snip of a kill scene. Something kills the double crosser. Not sure how or what or whatever... It wasn't a very satisfying kill scene to be honest. Very anticlimactic. I mean, fuck, we've been waiting almost 40 mins now for shit to even go on in the movie and this is the first big action scene we get? Way to lose the audience almost completely.
Since the gang didn't get to see our awesome snip of the double crosser getting killed, they all head back to the house to .... I don't know, I guess figure out what they want to do from here? I don't know. I was too busy thinking how nobody really checked the house out. They just waltz in to this one main livingroom and don't bother examining anything farther. What if there are people still living here? Or what if there was a killer there? No no, we don't need to bother looking around the seemingly abandoned house for any reason whatso-ever. Oh, well, Ok...
This movie fills like 90% filler. I mean. There are a ton of just needless shots. It's like the writer / director only had 50 pages of actual story and had to fill out lack of story with stupid shots that have nothing to do with anything. Not only does he zero in on objects that have nothing to do with anything, he gets lazy... or cheap.... or lazy and cheap and re-uses a lot of the same footage!! What the fuck?? Now, not only do I have to see scarecrow A. 30 times every other scene, but I get the same exact footage of scarecrow A.?? You can't give me another fucking angle? Or a different zoom in? Really? Nice. I swear they showed the plane making the same dive down-now-up shot 4 times. same trees in the background, they didn't even change the lighting! While the group wanders around the forest, it's pitch dark, when we switch to plane view it's day time? So. Lazy.
Remember how I mentioned earlier about this one picture on the wall of these 3 men? Well through out the rest of the movie, that same picture (I think it might have been the same damn shot repeated as well!!) was focused on several other times. At least - I swear- 5 more times. Guess what the point was? THERE WAS NO POINT!!!! IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING WHAT-SO-EVER!!! It was never talked about, no story told about who the fuck those guys were or how they were worth being focused on so often.
Looking around online, I found I wasn't the only one confused by vague clues in a sub par plot. There seem to be many theories about.... *waves hands around* whatever....was going on. Occasionally, during some of the filler scenes, we would get camera shots of these 3 scarecrow crosses that had no scarecrows. Well, apparently there is a little confusion about those as well. While I thought they were scarecrow posts, some people thought they were tombstone crosses...? They looked way too big for that, but... I don't know. Anyways... some people felt those 3 crosses represented the 3 brothers (??) in the photo. Another thing people couldn't figure out, were the scarecrows that killed people.... were they the 3 guys in the photo? Did the 3 guys in the photo kill people and turn them in to scarecrows? I....don't know. I DON'T! God, this movie was so aggravating. Don't get me wrong. I love a movie that makes you think and question what you saw, but this was just ridiculous filled with sloppy.
The reason some people think that the hundreds of scarecrows might have been ex-people, is because eventually, after the double crosser had his lame final exit scene, he comes back to the house and tries to kill everyone. After the gang defeat him, they find out that he has been cut open down his torso and everything (I guess the bones as well?) has been replaced with straw and money. So.... the double crosser looks like a normal guy but the....insides of him are.... scarecrow...ish? Oh, yeah... spoiler alert... I don't know if the scarecrows are ex-people or if they were more like big voodoo dolls...? At this point in the movie, I'm starting to not care.
At the very end of the movie, one of the gang members actually goes to in to one of the other rooms and.... guess what? there is this huge room filled with satanist stuff, blood symbols on the wall, a skinned blood arm, a ritual alter and all this other shit showing that some sort of evil hoo-doo obviously happened here. This room was one room away from the main room everyone stood in the whole freaking time. Are you really going to tell me that NOBODY would have noticed it or checked it out? Really? I find it very hard to believe. See, this is the kind of lazy crap I'm talking about. You could easily fix this be, say, it's a locked door and they only eventually get in in a fit of desperate escape.
This movie wasn't horrible. It was mostly just aggravating due to stupid lazy stuff like the above mentioned stuff. I honestly can't understand why...out there on the wide open inter web... so many people praise this movie. Did we watch the same thing?? I'm starting to wonder... It's either a totally different movie or this thing is highly over-rated.
2 1/2 stars out of 5
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